Monday, March 27, 2017

A new episode of Five Minutes Five Issues is out. You can listen to it, and read a transcript, below. You can also find previous episodes of the show at Stitcher, iTunes, YouTube, and SoundCloud.

Listen to the new episode here:

Read a transcript of the new episode, including links to further information regarding the topics discussed, here:

The Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity welcomes you to Five Minutes Five Issues.

Starting in five four three two one.

Hello, I am Adam Dick, a Ron Paul Institute senior fellow.

Let’s start.

Issue one.

At a Thursday hearing of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee of the United Sates House of Representatives, Norman Singleton of the Campaign for Liberty linked the growth of the “welfare-warfare state” to the Federal Reserve in his presentation in favor of HR 24.

HR 24 is this Congress’ version of the Audit the Fed legislation Ron Paul previously sponsored as a House member.

Preventing war is one of the reasons Paul wants to audit the Fed as well as end the Fed. As Paul declares in his book Swords into Plowshares, “[w]ithout the power over the creation of money and credit employed by the politicians and central bankers working in secret, most wars could not be fought.”

Issue two.

In 2010, then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) said people would learn what was is in the Affordable Care Act, commonly called Obamacare, after Congress passed it. This week, an effort to pass legislation before people had a chance to understand it was taking place again in the House, this time with a major healthcare bill marketed as repealing and replacing Obamacare. Rep. Walter Jones (R-NC), a House member and a Ron Paul Instituted Advisory Board member, said in a statement, “the rushed, behind-closed-doors process they’ve used is shameful,”

The new bill, unable to gain sufficient support, was withdrawn Friday afternoon without a vote.

Issue Three.

Last week, the US House of Representatives approved HR 1181, the Veterans Second Amendment Protection Act. The bill concerns protecting the right to bear arms. It also concerns protecting due process, the right to privacy, and the right not to be databased by the government for punishment based on bureaucrats’ decisions.

HR 1181 is intended to prevent US Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) decisions regarding veterans’ mental health, even just their ability to handle their finances, from resulting in veterans being listed in the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) list of individuals prohibited from purchasing or possessing guns. The legislation states that such a determination requires instead an order or finding from “a judge, magistrate, or other judicial authority of competent jurisdiction that such person is a danger to himself or herself or others.”

HR 1181 must also be approved by the US Senate for the bill to reach President Donald Trump for signing or a veto.

There is reason to expect that HR 1181 will become law. As I mentioned in the March 4 episode of Five Minutes Five Issues, earlier this year Congress approved and Trump signed into law H.J. Res. 40 that prohibits the implementation of regulations that would have allowed the US Social Security Administration to take similar actions against people receiving Social Security benefits.

Issue four.

On Thursday, a Jewish teenager with US and Israel citizenship was arrested in Israel for allegedly making many of the bomb threats against Jewish community centers and other Jewish institutions we have heard about in the news lately. The teenager’s lawyer says a brain tumor may have caused irrational behavior.

Earlier this month, Juan Thompson was arrested in St. Louis, Missouri for allegedly making some more of the threats against Jewish organizations. The allegations say Thompson sometimes made the threats in the name of a former girlfriend and other times in his own name and then claimed she was framing him.

Issue five.

Police body cameras have provided evidence of police brutality. But, Ava Kofman wrote Wednesday at The Intercept that, as real-time face recognition technology advances and photo databases grow, those body cameras along with other police cameras may be used more and more to conduct mass surveillance.

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That’s a wrap.

Transcripts of Five Minutes Five Issues episodes, including links to related information, are at the Ron Paul Institute blog.